Here's a overview article on Intergrated enterprises. does anyone know the significance of the reference to Cross Worlds and their adoption of IBM's MQSeries?
Best Regards,
Mad2
Copyright 1999 UMI, Inc.; ABI/INFORM
Copyright CMP Media Inc. 1999
Informationweek
June 14, 1999
SECTION: No. 738 Pg. 18,22; ISSN: 8750-6874; CODEN: IWEEA4
LENGTH: 1350 words
HEADLINE: Integrated enterprise
BYLINE: Sweat, Jeff
BODY:
Headnote:
New products help companies link apps across and beyond their organizations
(Photograph Omitted)
Captioned as: Mising link: There's not likely to be one software platform that can manage everything says Thompson.
IT organizations are deploying packaged applications, business-intelligence tools, electronic-commerce software and other apps at a blistering rate, solving one set of problems, but creating another: the need to connect them. Enterprise application-integration products promise to do just that, but early tools have come up short. A wave of upgrades and new products offers renewed hope.
EAI products are designed to link disparate applications without the custom coding otherwise required. The idea has gained popularity in IT departments, but some of the products haven't. Common complaints were that first-generation tools addressed only certain facets of the complex integration process, and despite promises of automating that process, they still required extensive coding.
The forthcoming products should overcome some of the drawbacks: New Era of Networks Inc. this week will unveil Neon Total Solutions, a set of connectors that address various types of integration with multiple enterprise packages, including PeopleSoft and SAP.
IBM will introduce MQSeries Integrator 2.0, which analysts say will add usability improvements and Java and Extensible Markup Language support. It's expected to be available in the fourth quarter. CrossWorlds Software Inc., an EAI vendor, said last week it will adopt the IBM MQSeries line as its messaging infrastructure.
Oberon Software Inc.'s Prospero 3.0, to be unveiled this week, will provide new application connectors and a common data format that can be used by a company and its partners.
Vitria Technology Inc.'s BusinessWare 2.2, released last week, makes it easier to connect applications graphically.
SuperNova Inc., a former tools vendor, this week will offer a suite combining application integration with application development.
The need for application integration is clear. As businesses automate operations with everything from enterprise resource planning software to front-office suites, they're also trying to pass information to partners, customers, and suppliers. And, despite the intentions of large ERP vendors, it's almost impossible for a company and its partners to standardize on a single application platform.
"There's not likely to be any single software program that can manage all the processes a large company has," says Bruce Thompson, VP of IS overseeing the SAP implementation at Smith & Nephew, a London manufacturer of medical products. "You'll always need to tie some software into larger systems." Legacy systems and new Internet apps based on Java and XML further complicate the issue, he says.
Analysts say the updates and new arrivals offer flexible integration frameworks that can handle the many facets of integration, including message queuing, data transformation, business-process modeling, and connections to multiple applications. "Vendors are trying to solve as many problems as possible under one brand name," says Kimberly Knickle, an analyst with AMR Research. "That means users have less of a need to glue that extra piece in."
The increased complexity of application environments demands powerful integration capabilitiesand the latest generation of application integration software is designed to manage end-to-end business processes, says Tim Hilgenberg, project manager at Hewitt Associates, a 10,000-employee management consulting firm in Lincoln, Ill. Hewitt handles employee benefits, including health-care and retirement programs. Lately, clients have been asking for broader services, such as applicant tracking, employee enrollment, and exit interviews.
That requires linking Hewitt's proprietary benefits-management system with other applications. "You have to be interacting with a whole series of heterogeneous systems," Hilgenberg says. "The problem is that as you add more and more systems, points of connection get large." BusinessWare 2.2 does "a really excellent job of improving the quality and robustness" of system connectors, Hilgenberg says. It also eases integration with legacy systems.
Tightening The Chain
One ot the biggest challenges many businesses face is tightening supply-chain links and communicating with E-commerce partners. Smith & Nephew has been using Oberon's Prospero to link SAP R/3 to its distribution and manufacturing software. The company now wants to extend its applications beyond the enterprise. "Business-to-business commerce is a foregone conclusion for us and our partners, field offices, suppliers, and sister companies overseas," Thompson says. Oberon's addition of Java and dynamic XML in Prospero 3.0 will make that easier by providing a common data format that can be used by the company and its partners.
But while business-to-business integration is a priority for some IT departments, until recently only a couple of vendors offered software that linked to external organizations. That's changing.
Viewlocity, a startup spawned by application-integration vendor Frontec Inc., said last week that it intends to handle integration for supply chains and E-business communities. Novera Software Inc., an application server vendor, will unveil version 4.5 of its suite, which connects Web applications to back-end data. And Agile Software Corp. this week will introduce Agile Anywhere, a suite that connects the applications of supply-chain partners through XML over the Internet.
CrossWorlds recently unveiled CrossWorlds eBusiness, which will support XML and electronic data interchange, and link to common E-commerce applications. And Extricity Inc. released Extricity 3.0 last month; it includes a number of integration templates for functions such as third-party logistics and E-commerce supply-side integration.
"With better visibility into our customer production plans, we could better manage our supply-chain inventory," says Frank Raboud, CIO of Hercules Inc., a Wilmington, Del., specialty chemical and food-products company that uses CrossWorlds to link SAP with its Manugistics distribution software. With the current system, salespeople take tank-level readings at plant factories, then enter that data into the Manugistics software, which collaborates with SAP to generate a replenishment order. If Hercules can use CrossWorlds to integrate directly with a customer's applications-a process it's evaluating-the company would be able to anticipate production fluctuations that would affect customer demand.
Such capabilities are offered to a degree by extranets and supplychain applications. But, analysts say, extranets are often passive repositories of information that aren't tied directly into back-end systems, and supply-chain applications often require that every link in the chain adopt a given package. Standbys such as EDI also provide connections, but Raboud says EDI varies from vendor to vendor and from partner to partner. Application integration helps overcome all the inconsistencies, he says.
Sprint just bought Vitria's BusinessWare in what analysts say may be the largest application-integration deal to date: a $ 10.2 million project that will automate and monitor Sprint's service-delivery and provisioning process, integrating 16 apps. The system will take orders from multiple order-entry systems, then coordinate their fulfillment across internal and external provisioning systems. The Vitria product, which will eventually be extended to other parts of the company, replaces resourceguzzling custom integration, says Michael Rapken, a director in Sprint's technology services group. "We have to fundamentally change the ways the things are integrated," he says.
The task of tying scores of applications together will continue to be a challenge. But as enterprise application-integration products mature, it should become a little less daunting.
Author Affiliation:
-with additional reporting by Beth Davis and Aaron Ricadela
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
JOURNAL-CODE: IWK
AVAILABILITY: Full text online. Photocopy available from ABI/INFORM
ABI-ACC-NO: 01838306
LOAD-DATE: June 25, 1999 |
